Ratha's Island Archive
Updated 4/16/2009 CB
This is an archive page for the Twitter novelette, Ratha's Island. All the #rathafic Twitter posts will be archived here as well as on the Ratha Series Forum.
Ratha's Island will start on Twitter March 14 at 12:00 noon, marked by the hashtag #rathafic. The hashtag will be removed in this archive for readability. Comments and discussions about the story are encouraged.
Ratha's Island, a Twitter novelette by Clare Bell, author of the Ratha or Named series.
Prepared for Twitter by Sheila Ruth and Clare Bell. Inspiration by Sheila Ruth. Copyright 2009
The Twitter search tag or hashtag for the story posts is #rathafic
Story archive pages are #1 The Scratching Log
Presently the story installments are posting at 12noon and 6 PM Pacific Time. My Twitter username is @rathacat or http://twitter.com/rathacat
And #2 The Ratha Series Forum
Archive pages will have text links to photos and blog posts about creatures in the story. You can also leave comments.
#rathafic Ratha, female leader of the Named cat clan, paused on the meadow trail, one forefoot raised.
To one side, the small three-toed horses that the Named called dapplebacks, huddled nervously.
On the other, the three-horned deer stamped and shook their heads.
The deer stabbed up with their forked nose-horns, as if at an invisible enemy only they could see.
Even the sky, choked with low clouds, seemed a threat. Ratha lifted her head, narrowing her eyes.
Just below the clouds two shapes circled.
Yes, they were birds, probably eagles, but she had never seen eagles this large.
Ratha knew the hawks and eagles that often sailed over clan ground, but she hadn't seen these birds before.
They seemed to fly much faster, making her even more uneasy.
Her ears flattened, their tips lifted, showing anger rather than fear.
Often her ears showed her emotions before they really surfaced in her thoughts. At that idea, they twitched.
At a safe distance from the three-horns, Ratha saw Thakur, the clan's herding teacher.
He was showing the younger cubs how to circle and drive a three-horn fawn.
His head lifted; she knew he had seen the white spots on the backs of her ears.
He raised a paw toward the young herder Ashon, who was helping him with the cubs.
The clouds gave a gray cast to Thakur's usually bright copper coat and the wind blew the feathering around his legs.
He hadn't yet lost all of his winter fur. Neither had Ratha; Fessran had teased her about being shaggy.
He bounded to her through the grass and nose-touched with her. He too, looked up at the sky, where the birds circled.
"They look big enough to carry off a dappleback or a young three-horn," he said. He lifted his muzzle, following her gaze.
Thakur wrinkled his nose, worry crumpling the black tear-lines that ran down his cheek.
"I've never seen birds like those before," Ratha said, only allowing herself to only briefly enjoy...
... the feel and scent of him standing against her. She had chosen him as her mate, and more.
"What are those birds?" Ratha asked Thakur.
"Condor-eagles. Bring the herdbeasts under the trees, so the birds can't swoop and grab one."
"Alert the herders," she said, feeling her voice sharpen with command.
"I see Fessran over there," she added. "Get her to summon the torch-bearers."
"Do birds fear fire as ground creatures do?" Thakur asked.
"Feathers burn as well as fur." Ratha said harshly, knowing the backs of her ears were showing again.
She glanced up. The circling forms were lower. She could now see they had feathered eagle-heads.
The birds had eagle-beaks as well, heavy and hooked. They were hunters rather than scavengers.
The realization lifted more fur along Ratha's back. "Hurry!" she growled, but Thakur had already sprung away.
Herders and Firekeepers assembled, then divided into groups as Ratha told them what to do.
The first group went out to bring in the stripers, larger, heavier horses than the dapplebacks.
They were faster and more dangerous, so Ratha wanted to get them out of the meadow and into the surrounding forest.
There the trees would keep the stripers together and prevent them from stampeding.
Next came the dapplebacks. They were easy to move, since they tended to follow the stripers.
Ratha watched while the herders moved the little horses under the sheltering branches.
Now all the herders had to do was get the three-horns into the trees, Ratha thought.
And those huge circling condor-eagles wouldn't be able to snatch away any of the herdbeasts.
The Firekeepers scrambled to light more guard-fires to help discourage the birds from attacking.
Fire was Ratha's creature. She had brought it to the clan and named it The Red Tongue.
Ratha scrambled up onto the sunning rock to get a better overview. She saw something she had missed from below.
Beyond the main mass of three-horn deer that the herders were driving to cover, she spied a group of cubs.
They were near a low bluff that rose out of the meadow.
From a distance Ratha recognized the little female. She was one of the best of Thakur's cub students.
Her boldness and dedication reminded Ratha of herself, when she had trained under Thakur.
Boldness, however, wasn't the best idea right now. "Leave the creature!" Ratha yowled. "Follow Ashon!"
The cub, however, was too focused on the three-horn fawn. Ratha knew that instinct had locked the youngster on her quarry.
Nothing would make the cub break away unless someone knocked her down. The really good Named herders had that one vulnerability.
Then Ratha heard a chilling cry and the rush of wings above.
Even before her mind realized that the huge condor-eagle was swooping down toward the cub...
...Ratha's rear legs shot out straight, hurtling her off the sunning rock.
Ratha flew straight toward the cub, but the condor-eagle dived faster.
The cub had reached the top of the bluff, where she was even more vulnerable.
The enemy struck the cub with its talons, bowling the youngster over, but the bird was flying too fast and missed the catch.
The cub tumbled, shedding a spray of red. Ratha landed, coiled, launched again, tail flared.
The enemy wheeled and dropped to where its prey had just stopped rolling.
Rage added to Ratha's speed as she flashed across the grass. Now she too, was locked in on her prey.
She had seen other, smaller, soaring birds before.
Sometimes they had trouble launching from the ground, and she could attack it while it was trying to lift.
The marauding bird hopped onto the cub, who squalled and began struggling.
A sudden hope added strength to Ratha's legs. The bird's first strike hadn't killed the youngster.
The condor-eagle's talons tightened around the cub's body. The huge wings opened and lifted.
Holding the cub in one taloned foot, the huge condor-eagle hopped to the edge of the bluff, facing into the strengthening wind.
One jump off the bluff, one strong downward flap, and the attacker would be away into the sky with its victim.
Ratha snapped her teeth together, swung her rear legs as far forward as they would go, then kicked off as hard as she could.
The bird snaked its eagle-head, crest-feathers rising; the head of a swift and deadly hunter, the large eyes cold and intent.
She aimed for the bird's chest with both forelegs rigid, claws out.
The beak opened, showing the narrow tongue and a maw large enough to swallow a clan cub whole.
Now Ratha realized how big her opponent really was.
The huge wings opened to a spread that seemed many times her own length, but the icy sting of fear didn't stop her.
She punched the condor-eagle backwards in an explosion of breast feathers and a tearing shriek.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a silver gray streak as Ashon dived in and grabbed the youngster's scruff.
She saw an an instant of hesitation in his stride and cried out, "Save the cub first!” "
She heard the grass crashing behind him and knew he had obeyed. Jerking her head around, she sought her enemy, but didn't find it.
The surge of triumph she felt at driving off the attacker ended when something struck her off her feet.
Ratha felt talons stab through her fur into her skin. The condor-eagle had recovered and used the wind to lift itself again.
The talons drove deeper. The wings spread above her head, catching the strong wind.
The bird hadn't given up. It had seized new prey. And she was already off the ground...
She went into a wild flurry with teeth and claws, but the bird's beak clamped down on her neck.
Choking and flailing, she felt and heard the wing-beats quicken.
Her pulse pounded in her head and jaws. She could barely force breath in and out of her clenched throat.
Now Ratha heard yowls and cries below her. "No!", she heard Thakur howl, then she and her captor jerked in the air.
Thakur had leaped and struck, but not hard enough to bring the condor-eagle down.
With dimming vision, Ratha saw him fall back into the crowd of herders that had gathered beneath.
His tear-lines were distorted with desperation. Agony filled his eyes. Beside him, her friend Fessran screeched in rage.
The bird wheeled into a turn, spiraling higher as it passed over the Named below.
Other clan members jumped, lashing up at the bird, but Ratha knew it rose too far above the Named for any to reach it.
With a triumphant scream, her captor yanked her up close to its underside and flapped higher.
She felt her head loll as the condor-eagle released her neck, but she was already slipping into blackness.
She only dimly heard the cries of her stricken clan below, mixed into the rush of wind past the great wings.
Ratha had thought that she would never wake again, but the moment came when her eyes cracked open.
Below her everything was blue-green, with curling white wave-tops.
Ratha's stomach jumped. Her eyes shut. Had her captor already carried her over the coast and out to sea?
She felt the burn of the condor-eagle's talons digging into her skin and wished she hadn't woken.
Each heavy wing-stroke bounced Ratha slowly up and down. She rocked from side to side as the bird balanced itself in the air.
Ratha found that if she stayed limp, the burning subsided into numbness, though...
...she could still feel the trickle of blood through her fur.
The seepage of blood wasn't enough to weaken Ratha. Not yet. But it it went on...
If Ratha fought back at her captor, she would have to attack soon.
Although if she did wound the bird enough to force it down, they would both land in the ocean.
Why was the condor-eagle bearing her so far from the coast, she wondered.
The Named knew little about the sea, but even those who had climbed the highest peaks said they could see no indication of land.
But this was a land-bird. Why would it fly to its death in the sea? Unless birds could catch the maddening foaming sickness.
Or because Ratha's captor knew something that she and the Named didn't. Maybe an island lay ahead in the expanse.
Rocky, cold, wave-beaten. A place for sea-birds, not condor-eagles.
Ratha knew about islands. She had fought with Thistle-chaser on an island and nearly died there.
As she would die out here, warned the slow but unrelenting trickle of blood from beneath the skin pierced by the raptor's claws.
Either she would become a piece of carrion in the bird's talons, or she would force it to cast her free, only to plunge and drown.
Her whiskers twitched at the thought. Not a suitable end for the proud leader of the Named.
Of course, no death ever was. She felt an ear-flick that reminded her of her own arrogance
Be still, she told herself. Let it think I'm dead.
She closed her eyes to think, but something made her want to open them again. None of the Named had ever been out here.
She couldn't turn her head without alerting her captor, and she couldn't shift her gaze without doing so.
Such was the cat-nature of her kind, and she had never thought much about it.
Instead, she let the slow swing and bounce of her body in the bird's grip move her gaze so that she could see more.
The view of sky and sea was at first disorienting, for Ratha had never before been so far aloft.
Previously she had only caught a ragged glimpse of the ocean before retreating away inside herself.
The wind rushing into her face woke a strange mixture of terror and excitement.
A wild beauty lay in the sky around her, with sun, sky, clouds and incredible distances.
No one of her kind had ever experienced this before. She opened her eyes wider; risked moving her head.
She might feel the clamp and smother of that terrible beak again, but she had to feed a new hunger that was rising inside her.
Ratha suddenly not only envied her captor its wings, but felt strangely grateful to it for sweeping her up in flight.
She told herself that she was crazy; that the thrill she felt was horror in disguise, or the dementia of approaching death.
Yet, somehow she was alive in a way that she had never been. To chase down the wind, to prowl the open sky... what a dream!
She could live as none of her species had ever done, if only for a short time.
Many wing-beats later, the waves looked tiny below. The condor-eagle rose higher through streams of cloud, still holding Ratha.
With each wing-beat she felt a growing determination born of mixed fear and wonder.
The wind dashing in her face and the soaring feeling of being so far aloft rekindled her will to fight for life.
Like the Red Tongue, Ratha's creature of fire, her renewed will seared through the frozen immobility of fear and horror.
She knew that there was land ahead and that she could reach it. Why else had the bird flown this way?
It was flying home, and home was on land.
First, though, she would have to plan carefully. Ratha knew she needed to strike the condor-eagle hard enough to twist out of its grip.
At the same time, she couldn't kill or severely disable the bird or it might throw her down or crash into the sea...
..and if it got her by the neck again...
She became aware that she was not only swaying from side to side, but front to back as well.
Sometimes the condor-eagle's grip shifted, moving her from one foot to the other, or turning her so that she faced backward.
She waited, wondering how deep her claws would hook into the feathers and the skin beneath.
Ratha felt the wind strengthen, lifting the bird and tipping it backwards. She swung toward the tail.
At the same time, the bird started to transfer her from one foot to the other.
Using the momentum of the swing to help, she whipped a paw up to strike and tear into the bird's side behind and below the wing.
The sharp dewclaw on the inside of her forepaw hooked and held. The condor-eagle jolted in the air, in a heart-sinking drop.
Ratha's second forepaw found a hold in the flesh of the bird's upper thigh beneath the feathers.
She felt the muscle quiver as her dewclaw sank deep. The bird shrieked in rage, but loosened its grasp.
Ratha twisted her hips free of the talons and kicked at the scaly shaft of the leg to give herself an additional boost.
She jumped her hindquarters up to fasten her rear claws in the bird's belly behind the legs.
Ratha felt the condor-eagle tumble to one side and she clung tightly. The beating of the huge wings slapped at her ears.
The bird's belly muscles contracted beneath her claws.
It curled downward in the air, the huge eagle-head and fierce eyes seeking her.
She whipped her tail away from the snapping beak. Ratha lunged upward, choosing her move when the wings were extending.
Another paw-whip and claw-sink, again with the long and sharp dewclaw.
The feathers here were coarser and stiffer beneath her pads. She had managed a hold on the raptor's back above the tail.
She felt the condor-eagle flap madly, tipping backward under her weight, and used the bird's confusion to pull herself up onto it.
With her rear legs straddling the bird's rump, feet turned inward for a claw-hold, Ratha sank her fore-claws into the back.
Now she had all her claws into her enemy. She wished she had more.
The condor-eagle bucked and twisted in the air, making beak-stabs backwards over its wing-shoulders, trying to slash Ratha's face.
It rolled and tipped, trying to get her off, but she clung fiercely through the crazy swooping and dipping.
A hot exhilaration surged up in her. She had done it! She was free of the talons, and beyond reach of the beak.
Nearly beyond, she amended, turtling her head back between her shoulders. That last snap had nearly caught her whiskers.
She realized how large the bird really was and that its size had helped her.
A smaller flier might have stalled and fallen out of the sky when she made her lunge, or gone over on its back, dumping her off.
Yet for all its size, it was fairly light and her weight unbalanced it, giving her a badly needed advantage.
Beneath her belly, the feathered ribs rose and fell and she could hear the bird's hissing pant.
It only seemed to be using one of its legs. The other dangled below.
She felt fierce joy when she realized she had probably broken that leg with her hind-paw kick.
As huge as this enemy might be, it wasn't invulnerable. If it were like the little birds she caught, it might be fairly fragile.
In a last angry spasm, the bird tried to dislodge Ratha by clapping its wings together above its back.
The wing-bones bruised and squeezed her, but she ripped out enough wing-feathers to discourage the condor-eagle from trying again.
She couldn't rip out too many wing-feathers, however, or the creature wouldn't be able to stay aloft.
“Stop struggling and fly,” Ratha snarled, as if the bird could understand her. “Just fly.”
It took many jarring moments before the condor-eagle apparently decided that it couldn't be rid of her.
She heard a hiss that sounded a bit like a sigh as it straightened its head, spread its wings and once more flew straight ahead.
Ratha's face fur flattened and her whiskers blew back in the strong headwind.
It stung her eyes and pulled at her jowls, chilling her teeth.
The condor-eagle flew much faster than she thought a bird could. She could hear the roar of wind through the flight feathers.
Some of those feathers looked as long as she was, even including part of her tail.
Though weary and wounded from the struggle, Ratha forced herself to stay alert, keeping her claws fixed in the bird's flesh.
Even though the condor-eagle appeared resigned to carrying her, she didn't trust it.
One moment of inattention or slackened grip, and it could roll or loop, knocking her off.
To ease the cramps in her limbs, she shifted her weight slightly...
...and discovered that doing so gave her some control over the condor-eagle's flight.
She decided to experiment, but first noted the sun's position in the sky ahead so that she could regain her course if she lost it.
When Ratha shifted to one side, she made made the condor-eagle dip one wing, and put the bird into a shallow banking turn.
She decided that she could risk loosening one paw to experiment, and pushed down on the wing.
This increased bird's bank and sharpened the turn.
Annoyed, the condor-eagle tried to resist, but the struggle had weakened the bird, and it soon gave in.
She tried this on the other wing, making sure she maintained her grip with her three other paws.
By shifting her weight forward or backward, she could tip the bird down or up, forcing it to climb or descend.
It protested with squawks and skreels, but didn't try to fight.
Elation rushed over Ratha when she understood that she could actually steer the creature.
Ratha looked up from her crouch on the condor-eagle's back. The blue sky overhead seemed to beckon.
She shifted her rear feet backwards toward the bird's tail and crouched again, making the creature climb.
Intoxicated by the experience, she kept the condor-eagle rising towards the high clouds. They looked like little dappleback tails.
Ratha no longer knew how long they had been climbing. They passed rags of cloud that sparkled with ice crystals.
The air grew chilly, then biting.
The intense penetrating cold and thinning air made Ratha gasp and shiver, yet she kept climbing higher.
The intense penetrating cold and thinning air made Ratha gasp and shiver, yet she kept climbing higher.
Suddenly she became aware that rime ice was forming on the bird's feathers and her own fur.
A wave of dizziness swept over her and she began panting hard.
Her mount's labored breathing expanded and contracted the rib cage under her paws. The great wings slowed their beat.
Above Ratha saw a blinding brilliance that gave everything a new clarity.
The icy edge of this incredible experience made life on the ground seem dull.
She snarled up at the sky, at the cold, the air that made her pant; everything that kept her from what she wanted.
It seemed so unfair to be tempted like this and then held away. Everything in her begged to go higher.
The condor-eagle's breath hissed in its throat and her own stabbed her chest. She felt the bird begin to falter.
Quickly, though reluctantly, she shifted her weight forward, sending the condor-eagle into a dive that steepened alarmingly.
Ratha moved back and the dive leveled out. She kept the condor-eagle in a slow, downward spiral.
She could feel the bird recovering strength and breath as they descended into thicker, warmer air.
The stabbing in her own chest eased and the dizziness faded. She looked up, still tempted and terrified.
She knew that she would risk death again in an attempt to climb the sky. The thought frightened her deeply.
Ratha swatted the fear away, concentrating on steering the bird back to its original path, and hoping that land lay ahead.
However, she knew that she would never forget the experience, nor be free of its temptation.
Again the condor-eagle increased speed until it was soaring faster than before. The wind-roar through its wings deafened Ratha.
The hunger for food that had been eclipsed and overwhelmed by excitement began to burn in her throat and ache in her belly.
Weakness brought paroxysms of shaking. Her mind threatened to drift and her claw-hold to loosen.
Her head fell and her nose brushed the bird's feathers near one forepaw. Blood welling from beneath her claws stained them.
Hunger seized Ratha with a talon-grip. She licked frantically at the feathers and the skin beneath.
Her rough tongue began to tear away fragments of skin.
Her mouth flooded, her belly cramped and she bared her teeth to sink into the bird's back...
...but a wave of repugnance stopped Ratha. Despite her hunger, she couldn't eat a creature that was still alive.
Bristlemanes and night-howlers might tear into the the belly of their prey while it was still standing.
The Named struck to kill and waited until death stilled struggle and suffering.
Only then would they eat, and would do so with respect for the life that had fled.
Hunger also warred with Ratha's sense of survival.
Trying to eat the bird while it was still flying might bring it down before they reached land.
The pain could send the creature into a convulsive struggle that could break her weakening hold.
With difficulty, she limited herself to licking the blood on the feathers only. She grimaced at the strong taste of feather-oil.
She would take only what the creature was losing anyway, barely enough to keep her alive and awake enough to cling on.
Fighting a growing exhaustion, Ratha's mind drifted back to her flight into the crystal sky above.
She forged the experience into her memory, not only so that she could tell her clan, but so that she could hold and treasure it.
Ratha started to lose herself in the thought, her grip relaxing.
With a start, she awoke from a near-doze and immediately tightened her claws.
She looked ahead into a sunset and felt her ears and whiskers droop.
The condor-eagle tilted its wings into shallow turn that she hadn't commanded. As it wheeled, she sighted a cloud mass below.
Forcing her bleary eyes to focus, she made out masses of black and green thrusting up though the cloud-bank. Her hopes leaped up.
For an instant she thought it was an illusion. She had now flown over many such clouds.
As Ratha's hope sagged again, she felt the condor-eagle fall into a downward glide. It too, had sensed land.
A wind blowing from the landmass ahead brought her strange scents of lush plants, rich soils, and tantalizing exotic animals.
The wind slowed and hindered the bird's approach. Again the condor-eagle labored, breath hissing.
T
The great wings could scarcely rise for each flap and the flesh beneath Ratha's claws shuddered.
Silently, desperately the bird beat on against the wind.
When Ratha could muster enough strength, she caught glimpses of a high mountain chain.
At the foot of the range lay high plains, visible through the clouds below.
This was no dot of island in a vast sea, but a whole new land, stretching north and south along the horizon.
Despite the wind that cut into her eyes, making them water, Ratha peered down.
The highlands did not slope down to beaches, but ended abruptly in cliffs, beaten by the sea.
The highest and blackest peaks belched plumes the color of the Red Tongue.
Craters spewed glowing globs that arced through smoke as they plunged down the mountainsides.
The sun fell behind the mountain range, turning it to silhouette, then sank abruptly with a flash of green...
...leaving behind a glow and the brilliance of the erupting plumes.
Ratha knew that she and the condor-eagle were exhausting their last reserves. The bird had sunk below the level of the cliff-tops.
It flew so low now that sea-spray wet its underside, and Ratha's rear feet. “So close, “ Ratha whispered.
“So close, but we can't reach it.“
Ratha felt her weight driving the bird down into the crashing sea. So long a struggle, and it would end here.
She thought about jumping off, but with no beaches and the rocky cliff base below, she had no chance.
Was she becoming delirious? From the darkness above, in the wind rushing overhead, she heard high-pitched whistles and chirps.
The trilling wavered up and down, running so high that it went beyond her hearing. She seemed to hear only the ghost of it.
Her claw-hold slackened and she couldn't regain it. Everything slipped in and out of focus.
The darkness outside was joined by an inner dark that crept up and attacked her awareness, as she would take down a herdbeast.
Other sounds came from above.
Now chirps and whistles mixed with wing-beats that were faster than her condor-eagle's heavy flaps.
To Ratha's ears,the wing-beats had a different quality than the whoosh of feathers.
The sounds were hard and flat, reminding her of a dappleback-hide flapping in a high wind.
No, she had to be seeing and hearing things. That often happened...at the end.
Ratha felt herself sliding from the condor-eagle's back, her eyes closing, her awareness draining.
Dimly she felt a touch on one side, then the other, which strengthened into a hold and then a clasp.
The unknown wings beat hard with a cracking sound that deafened her, yet she could still hear the piercing calls.
There were two sets of whistling trills; one very close, one distant.
Had another bird caught her, she wondered, her exhaustion-fogged mind barely able to think.
No. She felt the clutch of long bony forelegs, not scaled feet with talons. Did the legs have....fur?
Ratha's unknown helper tightened its grip, drawing her off the faltering condor-eagle and lifting her away.
She hung limply, accepting the unexpected rescue, too spent to wonder who, what, or why.
The condor-eagle fell away from beneath her.
For a groggy instant she thought it had plunged into the sea...
...but she caught a last glimpse of the bird stroking upward, freed from her weight.
She felt a strange empathy with her former captor and silently wished that it, too, would find refuge.
The condor-eagle had suffered in the struggle, yet the bird had battled its way to the island.
Her consciousness fled in the hard flap of her unknown savior's wings, bearing her up and away from the sea.
Ratha woke with the trickle of water in her ears, the lush green of foliage in her nose and the softness of moss under her paws.
She lay and listened to the queer noises around her. There was no trace of her rescuer.
Ratha felt grateful for the warm sun and still air. She'd had enough of wind.
Catching the scent of water, she turned her head towards a nearby stream, shaded by huge ferns.
Still too tired to walk, she crawled on her belly to reach the bank, dipping her head to drink.
The water was deliciously cold and fresh, with a stony flavor, as if it had emerged from a spring.
It gave her enough strength to gain her legs and stagger downstream to a sun-dappled pool.
Here, as she hoped, she found fish. The languid swimmers were large, lazy and surprisingly easy to swat out of the water.
Her daughter Thistle-chaser, and her mate, Thakur, might be better at fishing than she, but her skill served well enough.
She caught and ate several. Once sated, though, she noticed something odd about the fish.
At first Ratha thought the fish were trout, with the familiar trout head and eyes.
However, the body was longer, throwing itself into eel-like curves.
Trout also had two pairs of fins. These fish had three or four. The sight of these eel-trout made her uneasy; her stomach rolled.
However, they tasted like the fish she had eaten on clan ground. She decided that she hadn't accidentally poisoned herself.
Ratha's stomach calmed. Yawning hugely, she stumbled off to have a healing snooze beneath the ferns.
A sharp pull at her whiskers startled her out of sleep. Her eyes slitted open to see a scrub-jay-sized bird pecking at her.
It sidled around her looking for something else to pull or poke and she noticed that its body was longer than that of a scrub jay.
Her paw itched to slap at the bird, but curiosity stopped her. Its wings, half-extended, seemed much broader than the jays she knew.
Each wing also appeared to have two tips. Ratha squeezed her eyes shut; opened them again.
First the fish, now this. Was she still so tired that she was seeing things?
The bird wagged its head, turning black, beady eyes on her. It squawked, crouched and flitted away.
As she followed its flight, she thought she saw each broad wing...
...split down its length so that the bird had two single-tipped wings on each side.
She saw that these wings, like the fish fins, were in front and rear pairs. It had a pair of legs too.
The wings beat in counterpoint, the front set rising while the rear set fell, with long glides between.
Ratha shook her head until her ears flapped. This was a very strange place, she thought.
Every creature except the condor-eagle seemed to have...more...of everything.
Ratha tried to remember her unknown rescuer, but her fading awareness had left her with a fuzzy impression.
What sort of beast was the flying animal who had helped her, Ratha wondered. A great bat that whistled and chirped?
It didn't smell like a bat, at least not like the little ones she had caught as a cub. And bats didn't have long, furred forelimbs
Getting up, she wobbled only a little. As expected, she hurt, and the talon wounds where the condor-eagle dug in pulled and stung.
Hoping the stiffness in her body would ease, she took a few steps and felt her stride grow more fluid.
Looking around, she swiveled her ears, unsure what to do next.
When in doubt, wash, as her mother had often said. Ratha sat and cleaned the dried blood and dirt out of her fur.
When she finished, she shook her pelt, smelling the breeze.
Catching the tang of salt, she found herself in a little valley that opened seaward into a meadow, but no beach lay beyond.
Instead the meadow perched atop the high cliffs she had seen from the air.
Ratha paced to the cliff edge and gazed at the sun sparkling on the water.
Somewhere out there lay clan ground. Would she ever return?
A shake in the ground under her feet interrupted her thoughts.
The tremor continued, making her drive her claws into the soil, awakening the cramped ache in her feet. from clinging onto the condor-eagle.
The air itself seemed to shake and rumble and the tremor grew stronger, bucking and jolting her.
Ratha decided that the cliff-top was not a good place to be.
She made herself unclench her claws from the soil, lunged around, and bounded inland.
The shaking made her path jagged and her strides uneven. A strange roaring echoed through the trees to one side.
Panic drove Ratha deep into the forest before the ground settled and stilled.
Here the trees were massive, with huge root-dikes at their bases separating muddy hollows between.
She had to jump, scramble, and climb over the root dikes and snarls. She showed her teeth at the trees for impeding her way.
Not only were the trees frightening, but she felt as though eyes watched her.
Not only were the trees frightening, but she felt as though eyes watched her.
Ratha used her rage to fight off a growing desolation and loneliness. She felt hungry again.
Fish could sustain her, but she really needed meat.
Tail still bottle-brushed and nape ridged, Ratha began prowling, threading in and out of the trees.
Hoots and shrieks in the trees above told her that other tree-dwelling creatures lived in the branches.
Ratha thought briefly and painfully about her treeling companion, Ratharee. The treeling was safe at home.
Ratha had given the small lemur-like creature to her friend Bira to look after while she directed the herders and Firekeepers.
Though she missed Ratharee, she felt glad that the treeling wasn't here. This place was too threatening for a gentle treeling.
She hoped that whatever she did catch didn't look like Ratharee. Even if it did have an extra set of arms or legs.
Weren't there any normal animals here?
Ratha recognized the presence of hoofed creatures from tracks in the soil.
The patterns, however, seemed a bit different than the ones she saw at home. She couldn't put a claw on it.
More of the hoof-prints were overlaid by others, as if their makers walked in a strange way...
...that made them trample more of their own tracks.
This brought another wave of uncertainty, but Ratha snarled it away and continued hunting.
A rustle in the bushes alerted her to ground-dwelling prey. It had a horsey scent, mixed in with something muddy or swampy.
Following the sound and scent, Ratha circled downwind of the beast.
She glimpsed a gray and black coarse-furred rump among the leaves.
The swishing tail looked a bit like a dappleback's. Curious as well as hungry, she came closer, choosing her steps with care.
She stilled even before a pair of elongated horse-like ears poked up through the foliage.
A short wrinkled trunk uncurled and extended to strip leaves from a branch.
Her tail-tip switched in puzzlement.
From the rear, her prey looked like a fat dappleback, had ears like a rumbler, yet also a short trunk.
What other surprises would it reveal?
Even before Ratha made the conscious decision to attack, she was belly-down, creeping silently.
She coiled and launched, knifing through the brush and landing on the creature's back.
The beast lunged, startled, honking in fear.
Clinging to the prey's shoulders, Ratha twisted her head around to bite the arch of the neck...
...but she didn't find it.
To her dismay, she couldn't get her jaws open wide enough to bite the mass of flesh above the creature's forequarters.
The beast didn't seem to have a neck, just more body, hidden by the leaves, but definitely there.
Confused, Ratha swung a forepaw up to strike the head, but she only hit what felt like another limb.
She lunged up, seeking the head. The thing had ears and a trunk, so it had to have a head.
Ratha's chest slammed into a furry, upraised portion of her prey's back.
Although her rear feet clasped the barrel of chest, her forepaws found more ribs. What was this thing?
Losing patience with both herself and her prey, she clawed her way up the slope of the upraised part of the back.
She slapped frantically, trying to get her claws into the head or neck.
The creature bellowed.
She felt the upper body twist sharply, then something pointed and hard, like an elbow, rammed into her side, knocking her askew.
Her claws tore free and she tumbled into the branches.
As the would-be prey leaped away, Ratha caught a blurred impression of four running legs.
Was that a raised fore-portion of the body with another set of limbs (arms?), shoulders, a neck, and a head?
Then it was gone, leaving only swaying boughs. Ratha lay blinking, not sure what she had seen, or if she had really seen it.
Bruised but otherwise undamaged, Ratha crept away in defeat.
Thirsty, she sought out a stream. Again she caught and ate the eel-trout, then lay down, trying to make sense of her experience.
She tried to fit the animal together in her mind, but...
...there were too many parts.
The long ears, the wrinkled trunk, the fat rump, the hoofed feet, the lower belly and ribs she could identify, but the rest...
When Ratha's belly was reasonably full, she crept downstream.
On a mud-bank, she pounced on something that looked like a cross between a salamander and a snake.
Watching it squirm under her paws, she noticed that it looked like the newts on clan ground...
...except for an extra set of salamander legs. Intrigued, she released the creature and watched it.
The salamander threw its body into curves to drive the legs, just like the salamanders and newts at home.
This creature, however,swung its body into double curves, combining walking with snake-like slithering.
Thinking that it might be deformed, Ratha caught another. It too showed the same extra limbs and manner of movement.
Thakur should be here, she thought. He would love to explore this place and its odd animals.
Raucous cries overhead made her eye the higher branches suspiciously.
She wondered if the fluttering creatures above really were birds. Certainly not the ones she knew.
Spying one on a dead limb, she paced toward it. Ah, that was better. Only one pair of wings.
Then she saw that it held to its perch not just with one set of claws, but two.
In addition to the expected pair of legs behind the wings, another pair descended forward of the wings.
The thing had the same number of legs as she, plus the wings. She snorted in disgust, whirled and trotted away.
The forest opened as she made her way upslope, letting her see more of the sky. Blue near the seacoast, it now looked ash-gray.
She wrinkled her nose at the sulfurous smell.
Ratha knew she was approaching the foot of the mountain range she had seen from the air.
More groans and rumbles from beneath her feet made her hesitate. Only the sea lay behind her, blocking her way home.
If she wanted to explore further, she had to cross these mountains.
The trees thinned, letting her onto open ground.
She walked across rocks with strange blobby shapes, like dappleback manure piles when the horses had eaten too much grass.
These, however, were solid and night-black.
When she stepped on one that felt strangely hot, she retreated, but when she found herself unhurt, she went on.
She soon encountered another stream, flowing across more of the blobby hot rocks. It steamed.
At first she thought the rising fumes were mist, but they felt hot.
With care, she walked upstream.
The water and rock blobs warmed steadily until the water boiled and heat shimmer rose from them. Had one of those rocks...moved?
Her fur prickled. She stared at another. Yes, they were moving. Very slowly. Not rolling.
Oozing forward like huge slugs.
A hot wind made Ratha's eyes water and drifting steam stung her nose.
One of the sluggy rocks broke open, showing a core the color of the Red Tongue's embers.
Every hair bristling, Ratha retreated, showing her teeth. This was too much.
Extra-legged animals and oozing red-cored rocks. She spun around, heading downslope, seeking a place to hide.
She was overwhelmed, drowning in strangeness. She had to get away or go mad...
Ratha scrambled over a hillock entwined with roots, spied an opening, thrust her foot in. At last, a cave!
She peered in. As far as she could tell, it had no other inhabitants or other threats.
Diving into the refuge, Ratha crawled into the damp darkness and curled up, burying her tail in her nose.
Soon her breathing slowed and she fell asleep.
Ratha woke, slowly, drowsily. She felt a furry body curled up against her.
“Ratharee,” she mumbled, expecting to hear an answering chirp. None came.
Must be a clan cub that crawled in beside me, she thought, and started to drift off again.
What a crazy dream she had about many-legged animals and oozing rocks.
She drew in a long satisfied breath, then realized that what she smelled was not the soil of her home den.
Her fur stiffened; her tail flared. Her ears flattened.
If this wasn't her home den, then what was this creature curled up beside her? Not Ratharee or a clan cub.
She noticed that a flap of furred skin extended from the cub's hip region to the tip of the shoulder spar.
Ratha's ears swiveled in puzzlement. What was this funny flap on the cub's back-spar?
It almost looked like a wing, though far too small to bear the little creature in flight.
The flap wasn't a unique characteristic either, for the cub had one on each side.
Again, two more limbs, not necessarily legs.
Well, it is consistent, she thought, remembering the multi-finned eel-trout and the snaky salamander.
The basic shape of these island animals was a long body, a leg at each corner, like her own, but an extra pair or limbs between.
If this was true, she thought, her head spinning, then I, with only two sets of legs, am the strange one
Ratha sat in the dark, asking herself an unsettling question. Am I at a disadvantage in this place?
I certainly was when I tried to take down that chunky multi-legged dappleback beast, Ratha thought.
Do all the animals here run faster, fight harder, and fly faster than those at home. Am I...
...the crippled one? Am I like my daughter Thistle-chaser, who once limped on only three paws?
For an instant, her throat tightened, then she growled, banishing the thought.
She had planned to sneak out of the den, leaving the odd little cub behind...
...but the unsettling thoughts made her reach out a paw and gather it against her.
The cub stirred and its eyes opened.
They fixed on her with an unexpected intensity, seeking her gaze as a Named cub would do.
Ratha saw that the cub's eyes were larger and more elongated than those of a clan youngster.
The huge irises showed a smoky color that she couldn't make out in the dim cave.
To her surprise, the cub's pupils were elongated at a slant, rather than up and down.
Alien eyes, yet with an intentness and knowing quality that convinced her that this was not just another strange animal.
She saw no fear in the cub's gaze, just curiosity, and a strange shifting brilliance like the Red Tongue glowing through smoke.
The same light of awareness that gave her clan their names.
Her voice felt rough as she said, “Little one, how can you have this gift of my people in your eyes?”
The cub blinked and drew back its whiskers, as if she had blown in its face. But she hadn't.
Was it just her voice that disturbed the little creature?
The cub made odd chirps that rose in pitch. They became clicks, then faded to ghostly whispers too high for her to hear.
For more about:
Speculations about centauroid evolution
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More centauroid speculative biology
Rumblers
Treelings
The Named clan cats
Tahitian trees with “root dikes”
Paleogeography of Miocene California.
Ratha's Island would have been about 200 miles southwest of the coastline.
Palegography of Tertiary California
Watch the world change through time: Paleogeography animations
Paleogeography
Four wings? Not a fantasy: Microraptor gui
More about Microraptor
Six-legged walking by a bottom-dwelling fish
More about bristlemanes
Not all amphicyonids were bear-sized monsters. Early species were the size of a coyote or small wolf. Here is an amphicyon, Temnocyonine ferox from the John Day Formation
What are the bristlemanes?
Weight distribution and balance is important for birds as well as aircraft. I leaned how to fly in a Cessna 152.
Argentavis had 5 foot flight feathers.
Cheetah breeding and “The Catwalk”. Basis for “courting circle” in Ratha's Courage.
Cheetah dewclaw:
Cheetah dewclaw function:
Aerodynamics and ecology of Giant Teratorn. Agentavis was a predator, not a scavenger.
Argentavis frightening sabertooth cats away from prey.
Argentavis compared to human.
Ratha, Thakur and Thistle:
A young Named cub – artist's idea
Three-horn “deer” were based on protoceratids:
More about horse evolution:
Original conception of dappleback; Hyracotherium or Eohippus
Other possibilities
Striper (hipparion) picture - art by Mauricio Anton
Named herder
Giant 30 million-year old terratorn fossil (discovered in 1990's, re-interpreted).
Argentavis magnificens (giant prehistoric bird) compared to a Cessna 152 aircraft:
I learned to fly in a Cessna 152.
The "condor-eagle" is based on Argentavis magnificens.
Fessran is the leader of the Firekeepers, who carry torches and tend fires. Fan art:
Ratha and her people are extrapolated from the nimravid fossil, Dinaelurus crassus.
Cheetah face showing tear-lines:
Thakur the herding teacher
Me (Clare Bell)
Ratha
Inspiration for Ratha
The Named Cat Clan
Dapplebacks and three-horned deer
Dapplebacks - When Birds Ate Horses
Dapplebacks - The Bush of Horse Evolution
Three-horn deer - Wiki article
Three-horn deer - Image on a postage stamp
Miocene birds of prey
Teratorn - Giant bird of prey
Enjoy!
Labels: #rathafic, animal fantasy, California Miocene speculative biology evolution Clare Bell, centaur, experiment, Ratha's Island, Twitter. sabertooth
posted by rathacat @ 10:50 AM
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